Runaway ✔

123 • Dana

Hand in hand they walked through the mini-mart and loaded up the shopping basket Juice was holding. Two days ago they arrived at their destination, and it still felt surreal. Their journey to the south of Mexico had taken four days and most of the time they'd been hidden in a cargo hold of a truck. In the end they were dropped off in a small village where a friend of one of the Mayans was renting a holiday home to tourists. Juice and Dana had paid for a month in cash. 

Dana bent over the shelf with vegetables. There were lots of goods she didn't recognize, and she never had been a good cook. Any other day she would have looked for a recipe on the internet, but they were forced to rely on Juice's burner and that device was so old it didn't even have access to the web. When they got home, she would use his laptop. She found a head of lettuce and took some apples. Every country knew the concept of salad.

It was a very small shop, and there weren't even surveillance camera's. It gave Dana a safe feeling, knowing they could walk around without every movement being recorded. 

They added some items to the cart and paid in cash to the cashier. 

"Gracias," Dana said as she took the change while Juice put their things in a plastic bag. He was wearing a cap to hide the tattoos on his head; they attracted too much attention. 

They put on their sunglasses as they left the building and strolled along the empty main road to their temporal cottage. It was quiet. Despite the heat there was a lot of green around them and Dana noticed the sight of it made her happy. To the apartment they were hiring belonged a pretty big garden with beautiful flowers and she had even spotted a hummingbird yesterday. 

She liked to be here, she had to admit. It felt like she was settling down for the first time in years and even though doing nothing usually made her feel restless, she could sit in a law chair now and listen to music all day. Due to the distance between California and Yucatán she could finally step back a little from everything that had happened. 

Of course she never really forgot about Charming. Often enough she thought about her friends who might be fighting Maddox's guys right now. And she thought about Happy. His situation was still the same, he was still in prison together with her father. Every day she imagined how he sat around a table, eating, looking at their father with a scrunchy face because he was the only one offering protection. Sometimes she wished she could call him, to hear if he was all right. At the same time she knew that would bring her nothing but awkward silences. For years they had nothing to say to each other and even if Happy felt miserable he would never tell her. He would keep up appearance everything was fine and that she didn't need to worry about him. 

There was no point in thinking about things like that, Dana knew that. Even if something horrible happened, they would probably find out about it weeks later. And maybe they would never find out. 

Maybe they never got that one call telling them the coast was clear. Then Juice would only find out about the truth if he decided to leave her. Her eyes drifted aside, but the smile on Juice's face told her she didn't have to worry about that yet. He enjoyed being with her here, the relative safety and the fact they didn't have to hide all the time. 

Back in the apartment, she let Juice put away the groceries. He probably needed some kind of system. A few steps away from him she watched how he opened and closed doors, contemplating where things fitted best. It was fun to watch, especially because she would just have plopped everything in the same drawer. But she liked those differences between them. 

She leaned against the table and kept watching him until he noticed. He turned around and gave her a questioning look. 

"You know... during the time you are weighting the best place to keep the cookies, we could have done much funnier things." She wiggled her eyebrows and played with the hem of her sundress.  

For a moment he froze. Pensively he stared at the cookies. Right when she thought he would forget about the groceries, he turned around again. "Nah, the longer you have to wait, the better the sex."

"Tss." Offended Dana took off her slipper and threw it at his head. "Sex with me is always fantastic."

"Yeah, figured it would be better if I let you believe that."

"Are you gettin' lippy with me now there's no competition left?" She walked away from the table and slipped her arms around him. "But ya still ain't the best liar," she whispered, biting his neck and letting her hand slip inside his pants. Her fingers stroked his hard member. "This little guy can't wait as long as you claim."

His eyes grew dark with lust as she wrapped her fingers around him. A second later he lifted her up, put her down on the kitchen table and started kissing her, finally forgetting about the groceries still on the counter top.